Meeting Tony from New York and the homeless

The light from the street pole stabbed the dark and the cold breeze numbed my fingers. The paved streets were painted in colored layers of dry leaves. Like frozen tears from a tree they splashed the floor. It was a solitary night at the downtown plaza. The crunch below my feet was the only sound for blocks. When standing still the deep silence of the night hummed to the chill air.

Once all the sleeping spots are taken, on the cold nights, the homeless seek shelter at the St. Francis house, a temporary shelter for those in need. The facility makes an exception during nights with extreme weather by allowing more people it can normally house to spend the night. They place them on the main desk floor, the entrance hallway floor and the lunchroom floor. Blankets and floor mats ador n the fading black and white or nate tiles and people.

There is a curfew, and because the homeless have to be at the door by a certain time to enter, the streets get cleared out very early.

As I walked around the plaza I noticed a group of people mingling outside a church. There were two men and a woman. The entire block was dark, except for their corner.

His voice stood out. His tone had a dark timber. He was a man of short stature, always looking down, and because he wore a hoodie I couldn't see his face.

The cover of the book he held in his hand got my attention and I asked him why he had that book.

He said his name was Tony from New York and that the book was about The Harbor. He was very friendly and introduced the woman sitting across him as his partner.

The other man I did know, he was from the first couple that allowed me to hang out with them. He excused himself and went to prepare the spot for the night. He invited me to spend the night with them or at least to visit before I left. I told him I would definitely stop by and continued to talk with Tony.

I was curious why they were out in such a cold night. I was sure St. Francis had space for them, and a couple of blankets and mats too

Tony and his partner said they liked it better outside because they didn’t like dealing with the crowd that went to St. Francis. Apparently they had a bad experience with fleas and bed bugs the last time they were there, so they decided to stay outside.

Tony seemed like a straightforward kind of person and his partner did too. I was comfortable enough to ask them why they lived in the street.

Standing in a corner, watching people walk by, made me reminisce on my childhood in Nicaragua. Hanging out with the neighbors out on the block after a street baseball game.

I mentioned that to Tony and he said he also played in the street with his neighbors as a kid, something children rarely do now a days.

In my town, Granada, the uneven clay roofs of the neighborhood claimed up to twenty homemade balls a day. And when that last ball would get stuck, all the kids would gather around and offer their part to make more balls.

We had to make our own by wrapping a small rock or a marble no longer worthy of the bucket for the next marble tournament, with socks. That is how my grandfather's silk pairs would come back missing one of each after the laundry. He blamed the entire world except for us, and we were fine with that. No were in the commandments it said that using something that belongs to your family for another purpose was stealing, so we were sin free, for now.

Some kids used several cereal boxes stacked into each other as gloves, I was lucky to have a real glove, a hand-me-down from a cousin, but it was a nice glove, the only one we ever owned, me and my six brothers.

Tony laughed and began to tell me part of his story.